Newbie Question about Voltage Regulators

Hi -

I’m currently working on my MB-6582 base PCB and I am just not sure which way to orient the V1 voltage regulator.  I understand only enough about them to know that it matters which way they go, but not enough to know the answer to this probably simple question. 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Also, I plan to run 8 SIDs and it seems as though putting a heat sink on the voltage regulator is the wise way to do it?  Am I right in this assumption?

Thank you,

-S

Hi there, if you look closely the reg silkscreen on the board is a rectangle with a line inside it resembling the metallic tab on the reg, you should orient it the same way.

About the heatsink, Wilba says it’s probably not needed for psu option A.

I added one on my box but the reg stays cool enough to be fine without it, but YMMV.

good luck with the build.

Thanks!  That was my guess, but I didn’t want to go into it blindly. 

The rule of thumb about regulators is, if you can’t keep your finger on it, it needs a heatsink.

The one in my MB-6582 gets warm, but not hot.

Shouldn’t that be a rule of finger? :wink:

The rule of thumb about regulators is, if you can’t keep your finger on it, it needs a heatsink.

What if you can’t keep your finger on the heatsink? lol.

Mine seems to have a problem, but I just can’t put my finger on it… :wink:

yea, I haven’t quite fingered mine out…

(Ok.. thats lame)